Rating: 
Summary: Highly entertaining reader for mystery buffs & sci-fi fans.
Review: After nebbish scientist Mason Brooks invents a dream-the-future machine, he uses it to amass riches in stocks and gambling -- and to impress the young and beautiful Monica Westfield. Then, he starts dreaming about his own death and must stop it before it comes true. The various lethal dreams share only one common element: the presence of Paul Fontana, a stranger to Mason and a used car salesman who is skeptical of this whole "dreaming the future" thing. Desperate to solve their mysterious bond, Mason pays Paul to become a guinea pig in the dream experiment. What Mason doesn't count on is that Paul falls in love with Monica and realizes the truth about Mason. Can Mason save himself and Monica before its too late? Wake Up Dead is a speculative thriller that blends elements of science fiction and mystery suspense that will prove highly entertaining reading for scifi fans and mystery buffs alike!
Rating:
Summary: A FUTURE AWARD WINNER
Review: At last, a book that I didn't have to "get through" the first few pages! Sensational!!! Make sure you don't have anything to do after you pick up this book. a definite "page-turner" in every sense of the word!! Wonderful blend of mystery/sci-fi! Christopher Bonn-Jonnes can't write fast enough for me! I anxiously await another from this talented writer.
Rating:
Summary: Nice guy, nicer book
Review: Christopher Bonn Jonnes makes the transition from business writing to mystery writing with his first novel, Wake Up Dead. An unlikely author, Jonnes is vice president and co-owner of an industrial manufacturing company. His own personal experiments with lucid dreaming inspired this novel.Mason Brooks is a rogue professor who has made himself rich by experimenting with the concept of lucid dreaming and cashing in on what appears to be the ability to predict the future within a certain time frame. He has lured a beautiful young student, Monica Westfield, into his life and home with money and power. But he begins to see predictions of his own death tied in with a stranger named Paul Fontana, a handsome salesman with a taste for fast cars, loose women, and gambling who regularly manages to elude loan sharks. Brooks invites Fontana into his home to further his experiments and to try to find closure on the death dreams, but he doesn't bank on how quickly Fontana and Monica fall in love: "In a masochistic way he was proud of his cleverness for having acted upon his suspicion of Paul and Monica. After all, there hadn't been much to go on. Paul's desires were clear, but would he act on them? Monica had done only two things to make him question her faithfulness. She was quick to defend Paul on the question of the gun, and the fact that she searched his room and found the gun began to eat at Mason." Wake Up Dead is a psychological thriller of sorts, heavy on dream psychology. Jonnes does a great job of conjuring up characters that project Hitchcockian qualities: Monica is beautiful, intelligent, and is completely under the sway of the increasingly psychotic Professor Mason Brooks. Paul Fontana evolves from a two-bit hustler to a brave and self-sacrificing man worthy of Monica's love...if he can save her (and himself) from the clutches of the mad professor. Wake Up Dead is a page-turner that simmers with sensual passion and pulses with unspeakably haunting danger. There is nothing more terrifying than contemplating the breakdown of the human mind and civility when the scientific experiments begin. Christopher Bonn Jonnes rocks.
Rating:
Summary: A sensual, passionate, hauntingly dangerous page turner.
Review: Christopher Bonn Jonnes makes the transition from business writing to mystery writing with his first novel, Wake Up Dead. An unlikely author, Jonnes is vice president and co-owner of an industrial manufacturing company. His own personal experiments with lucid dreaming inspired this novel. Mason Brooks is a rogue professor who has made himself rich by experimenting with the concept of lucid dreaming and cashing in on what appears to be the ability to predict the future within a certain time frame. He has lured a beautiful young student, Monica Westfield, into his life and home with money and power. But he begins to see predictions of his own death tied in with a stranger named Paul Fontana, a handsome salesman with a taste for fast cars, loose women, and gambling who regularly manages to elude loan sharks. Brooks invites Fontana into his home to further his experiments and to try to find closure on the death dreams, but he doesn't bank on how quickly Fontana and Monica fall in love: "In a masochistic way he was proud of his cleverness for having acted upon his suspicion of Paul and Monica. After all, there hadn't been much to go on. Paul's desires were clear, but would he act on them? Monica had done only two things to make him question her faithfulness. She was quick to defend Paul on the question of the gun, and the fact that she searched his room and found the gun began to eat at Mason." Wake Up Dead is a psychological thriller of sorts, heavy on dream psychology. Jonnes does a great job of conjuring up characters that project Hitchcockian qualities: Monica is beautiful, intelligent, and is completely under the sway of the increasingly psychotic Professor Mason Brooks. Paul Fontana evolves from a two-bit hustler to a brave and self-sacrificing man worthy of Monica's love...if he can save her (and himself) from the clutches of the mad professor. Wake Up Dead is a page-turner that simmers with sensual passion and pulses with unspeakably haunting danger. There is nothing more terrifying than contemplating the breakdown of the human mind and civility when the scientific experiments begin. Christopher Bonn Jonnes rocks.
Rating: 
Summary: Ok, but not the best I ever read
Review: I finished reading this book about a month ago, and although it kept my interest, I thought it was flawed. Maybe it's just a writing style conflict, but I felt that the explainations of sleep machine was not clear, I never actually got a look(in my mind) of the sleep machine, and the romance was typical. I thought the story was original, but the story overall had a lot of holes in it. Many questions were unanswered. I give it 3 stars for originality! That's my .02.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent First Novel
Review: I have never found a book this way. In reading various reviews on books and videos that I was interested in at Amazon, I kept running into Christopher Bonn Jonnes, it appears that we have much the same taste, and the same opinions on various products here. Of course, if you have read his reviews, he always includes his books in his signature.
So I thought I would give the book a whirl, but didn't really wasn't anticipating it being very good, just because someone has excellent taste doesn't mean that they can write a good novel.
I was delightfully surprised that it was indeed a very good book.
Wake Up Dead is based on Einstein's premise that we should remember the future, or in this case be able to dream it. Of course a scientist, Mason Brooks, develops a process that allows him to do just that. The main problem starts when he keeps dreaming of his own death involving an unknown car salesman.
The salesman, Paul Fontana, is invited to his house in order to study his dreams. A love triangle develops and things begin to get sticky after that. Fontana is very skeptical of the Brook's claims but slowly comes to realize that he can indeed dream the future (although only one day in advance), however at the same time, he begins to realize that everything else about Brooks is a lie. With the lives on the line, can either man change the future?
What pleased me most about this book is the pacing; Mr. Bonn Jonnes goes into technical detail but not so much as to bog down the book. The pace remains quick and the story develops rapidly, in fact, that would be my only complaint about the Wake Up Dead, at times I did wish that he would have explored more in depth in certain areas of the story.
Aside from that, this is an excellent first novel and I look forward to reading Big Ice and his releases in the future as well.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent First Novel
Review: I have never found a book this way. In reading various reviews on books and videos that I was interested in at Amazon, I kept running into Christopher Bonn Jonnes, it appears that we have much the same taste, and the same opinions on various products here. Of course, if you have read his reviews, he always includes his books in his signature.
So I thought I would give the book a whirl, but didn't really wasn't anticipating it being very good, just because someone has excellent taste doesn't mean that they can write a good novel.
I was delightfully surprised that it was indeed a very good book.
Wake Up Dead is based on Einstein's premise that we should remember the future, or in this case be able to dream it. Of course a scientist, Mason Brooks, develops a process that allows him to do just that. The main problem starts when he keeps dreaming of his own death involving an unknown car salesman.
The salesman, Paul Fontana, is invited to his house in order to study his dreams. A love triangle develops and things begin to get sticky after that. Fontana is very skeptical of the Brook's claims but slowly comes to realize that he can indeed dream the future (although only one day in advance), however at the same time, he begins to realize that everything else about Brooks is a lie. With the lives on the line, can either man change the future?
What pleased me most about this book is the pacing; Mr. Bonn Jonnes goes into technical detail but not so much as to bog down the book. The pace remains quick and the story develops rapidly, in fact, that would be my only complaint about the Wake Up Dead, at times I did wish that he would have explored more in depth in certain areas of the story.
Aside from that, this is an excellent first novel and I look forward to reading Big Ice and his releases in the future as well.
Rating: 
Summary: How Would Knowing the Future Change Your Life?
Review: In this science fiction thriller, you will examine life from the premise that you can know what will happen next . . . and influence the outcome in your favor. The moral of the story is that this foreknowledge will tempt us to take on God-like powers that will dehumanize us in the process. Obsession is not good for us, regardless of its form. Researcher Mason Brooks develops a way to discern the future from his dreams, and change the outcomes. This makes betting and investing easy. He uses this skill to amass a fortune and attract the beautiful, young Monica Westfield. But something is going wrong. Brooks dreams of his own death, and each time he does, he sees the same young man, Paul Fontana. Soon, Brooks arranges for Fontana to join the dream experiments to find out how to avoid dying. The three characters become involved with each other in a rapidly developing maelstrom of jealousy, greed, passion, and fear . . . connected by future inklings. Many readers will see parallels to Frankenstein, the novel. Brooks wants to eliminate his creation, the precognitive Paul Fontana, in the same way that Dr. Frankenstein wants to eliminate his monster. Paul and the monster just want love, and Brooks and Dr. Frankenstein don't want to provide it. Both creations come to reflect on their creators. The strength of this book is in the plot line about the implications of precognition of the future. Many fascinating questions are raised that will leave you thinking long after you have finished the book. I would have enjoyed the book even more if the plot had sustained these questions and conflicts longer. The weakness of the book lies in the plot details involving the two unappealing male characters. Although the plot has tremendous conflict, action, and development, the characters repelled me so much that I found it hard to relate to them. Fortunately, Paul Fontana pursues a path toward redemption, which made the ultimate resolution reasonably rewarding. On the other hand, the Monica Westfield character is very interesting and well developed in the book. If the other two characters had matched her appeal and complexity, Wake Up Dead would have been an incredibly outstanding novel. After you have finished enjoying this speculative action story, I suggest that you ask yourself how you would change your life if you knew you would die on a certain day from lucid dreaming. Would you be like Mason Brooks and try to avoid that event, or would you simply make the best use of the remaining time? Or would you discount the dream? Sleep on important decisions before you act!
Rating: 
Summary: I managed to finish the book
Review: The future exists in the present -- we witness it every night while we sleep. Déjà vu is the bringing of these subconscious memories into conscious awareness. Because we have seen the future, when it occurs, we experience a feeling of repetition. When researcher Mason Brooks invents a machine that allows the subconscious world of dreams to be brought into consciousness, he learns to manipulate the future for his own purposes. He satisfies his dreams of wealth, a beautiful woman, and power. However, his single-minded manipulations result in enslavement as he falls victim to the lure of predicting the future. His relationship with his girlfriend Monica deteriorates and he becomes obsessed with subverting the death he's dreamed repeatedly. Only one element ties the dreams of death together -- a man named Paul Fontana, a younger, attractive man, and a complete stranger. Mason lures Paul into his dream research with promises of wealth. However, Mason didn't realize the added danger posed by bringing Paul into his home. The younger man is immediately captivated by Monica and becomes determined to win her away from the professor. As tension builds, Christopher Bonn Jonnes creates fascinating philosophical and ethical quandaries. Yet this is not a boring cerebral treatise, but a fast paced thriller with deep psychological ramifications. WAKE UP DEAD is an unnerving page-turner guaranteed to keep the reader guessing until the last moment. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: I managed to finish the book
Review: The topic was an interesting idea, but I do not feel that Mr. Jonnes was able to do justice. I kept reading and hoping that it would get better. I wanted to be drawn into the plot and concerned about the characters, but it just too plain. I encourage Mr. Jonnes to keep at writing though.
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